Student resources

The Learning Commons offers a network of tools, services, and expertise to help students thrive across disciplines. From study strategies, goal setting, and time management to writing consultations, conversation partnerships, and style and citation support, our resources are designed to strengthen your academic skills. Explore these integrated resources to build personalized strategies for success throughout your academic journey.

Quick links

Equipment checkout

Need a calculator for a day? Want to look up a formula or get an alternate explanation on a concept? Having trouble visualizing the structure of a molecule? The QSC can help with that! We have an assortment of physical equipment available for checkout, including items like calculators, textbooks, and molecular model sets to name a few. Learn more about checking out equipment from the Learning Commons.

Academic success

The Academic Success Coach offers various resources, including worksheets, guides and websites that help you work independently toward academic success.

Learning & studying

5-Day Study Plan offers a more effective and less stressful approach compared to pulling an all-nighter. Use the steps and template to create your own 5-day study plan. The focus is on active preparation and review strategies to solidify knowledge before the exam.

Focused Study Session (FSSs) can optimize your retention of course material through short, focused study time chunks. This method can motivate individuals to schedule several focused study sessions per class each week.

Study Cycle is a five-step systematic process that involves previewing, attending, reviewing, studying and monitoring your progress. This method is designed to help students engage with course material more effectively, improve understanding and enhance retention and information.

Note-taking before, during and after a lecture helps you stay organized and remember important information. It’s a great way to actively participate in your learning and improve your understanding of the material.

Bloom’s Taxonomy guides students in progressively developing cognitive skills, ranging from remembering and understanding to applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating.

Group work

Study groups provide a supportive environment for discussing challenging material, sharing resources, deepening understanding and improving study habits.

Working in teams helps develop communication, problem-solving, leadership and interpersonal skills.

Time management

Smart goals are beneficial for both short-term and long-term goals as it helps individuals stay focused, motivated and organized in achieving milestones within a specific time frame.

Time budget sheet helps you manage your schedule effectively and make time for important tasks. It can also help in identifying distracting activities.

Week-by-week time management allows you to plan and organize activities and appointments each specific week.

Weekly planner can be used to assign specific time blocks for tasks like classes, studying, assignments and personal activities to improve time management and productivity.

Creating a weekly to-do list with high and low priority tasks helps individuals stay organized, prioritize important tasks, manage time effectively and reduce stress.

Faculty & staff communication

Improving class participation helps you learn, think critically and communicate effectively.

Office hours are not just for doing damage control for your grade. Common reasons to attend office hours include seeking clarification on course material, discussing assignments or exams and receiving guidance on careers and research opportunities. Creating a relationship with your instructor through attending office hours also opens the doors to letters of recommendation.

Archived workshops

The following slides and resources are from the workshops we have run in the past. Curious what workshops are happening this quarter? You can find the current workshop schedule here!

Communicating with Professors

We assist students in brainstorming effective and professional ways to communicate their questions, concerns and interests with their professors in person, during office hours and through email. Additionally, we guide students in learning how to build long lasting relationships of trust with their professors.

Goal Setting & Motivation

We guide students through concept mapping, vision boarding and long/short-term goal setting. We ask students to uncover their “why.” Why are they at an institution of higher learning? Why are they seeking a higher education degree and more opportunities? Knowing their “why” can assist students in recognizing what motivates them and keeps them going. Students learn how to break down their bigger goals into smaller tasks.

Learning Strategies

We share with students studying skills, meaningful learning, diverse learning styles and the impact of various learning environments.

Note-Taking

Students learn how about multiple forms of notetaking, efficient listening, and ways to organize information learned. Additionally, students learn about retention and critical application of knowledge learned.

Test-Taking

Students learn how to best prepare for and study for exams while learning how to overcome test anxiety.

Health & safety

The CARE team is a group of trained campus professionals who quickly connect students to resources that address student concerns related to both academics, health and wellbeing — including, but not limited to:

  • Concern for student’s health, safety, and well-being
  • Financial or situational crisis
  • Significant change in student’s behavior
  • Disruptive of learning, living, or work environment
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Quantitative reasoning

The Quantitative Skills Center provides specialized assistance for data analysis, software, and equipment access.

Refreshers

Need to brush up on math or statistics? We have created a library of refreshers in the form of instructional videos, websites, reference sheets, written instructions and practice problems. If you would like assistance with any of the content, please come to the QSC.

Available software

The QSC computers have the Microsoft Office Suite and other programs standard to all UW Bothell computers, as well as the following specialty software:

  • ArcGIS 10.2.2 for Desktop
  • BlueJ
  • EASy68K, Sim68K
  • Eclipse
  • Emacs
  • Google Earth
  • IBM SPSS Statistics 21
  • LTspice IV
  • MATLAB R2013b
  • Microsoft Mathematics (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013
  • NetBeans IDE 8.0.2
  • PuTTY
  • Python 3.4.2 (64-bit)
  • QB64
  • R for Windows
  • RStudio
  • Tableau
  • TortoiseHg 3.1.1 (64-bit)
  • TortoiseSVN 1.8.8.25755 (64-bit)
  • Wolfram CDF Player
  • Scratch
  • Maple
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Writing support

The Writing & Communication Center offers guidance in writing, research, and language development.

Conversation partners

Practice speaking English, expand your vocabulary, and gain confidence in your conversational skills. Use our online schedule to make an appointment and in the box “Is there anything else you’d like to share” state you’d like to schedule an appointment for a conversation partner. Schedule an appointment with a conversation partner.

Citing sources

A variety of tools for handling citing sources in APA, MLA, Chicago, CSE and several other citation styles, with the most up-to-date methods for citing online sources. Also links to citation machines, and strategies for successful paraphrasing and use of quotations.

WaCC citation resources:

External citation resources:

Citation Machine: Citation Machine is an interactive web tool designed to assist high school, college, and university students, their teachers, and independent researchers in their effort to respect other people’s intellectual properties. 

Reference materials

Reference materials to many useful online resources including punctuation and grammar webpages, dictionaries, an online technical writing textbook, and Ask Betty, an extensive, user friendly resource for grammar, which includes a FAQ section.

Campus Library

On the Campus Library website, use the “UW Libraries Search” tab to discover articles, books, media and more and use “Course Reserves Search” tab to find course-related required materials made available through the UWB/CC Campus Library.

External resources

Handouts

Helpful information sheets created by the UW Bothell Writing & Communication Center and others that can be downloaded and printed and address topics including: formatting annotated bibliographies, noun/pronoun agreement, avoiding run-on sentences, semicolon use and active versus passive voice.

Online UW Bothell handouts:

Other sources of handouts:

Additional resources

  • Evaluating online sources. Advice from four different universities, including the UW Bothell, for assessing the sometimes-overwhelming variety-and amount-of information available on the internet. Read more on evaluating online sources. 
  • Literature reviews. Writing a literature review? The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill has a great handout. 
  • Scientific reports. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center provides a great resource for writing scientific reports.
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